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Agricultural yields have increased steadily in the last half century, particularly since the Green Revolution. At the same time, inflation-adjusted agricultural commodity prices have been trending downward as increases in supply outpace the growth of demand. Recent severe weather events, biofuel mandates, and a switch toward a more meat-heavy diet in emerging economies have nevertheless boosted commodity prices. Whether this is a temporary jump or the beginning of a longer-term trend is an open question. Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior examines the factors contributing to the remarkably steady increase in global yields and assesses whether yield growth can continue. This rese...
Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world. Seeking adventure and profit, the transplanted farmers created what Andrew Ofstehage calls "flexible farms" that have severed connections with the basic units of agriculture: land, plants, and labor. But while the transnational farmers have destroyed these relationships, they cannot simply do as they please. Regardless of their nationality, race, and capital, they must contend with pests, workers, the Brazilian state, and the land itself. Welcome to Soylandia explores the frictions that define the new relationships of flexible farming—a paradigm that Ofstehage shows is ready to be reproduced elsewhere in Brazil and exported to the rest of the globe, including the United States. Through this compelling ethnography, Ofstehage takes readers on a tour of Soylandia and the new world of industrial agriculture, globalized markets, international development, and environmental change that it heralds.
Industrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation an...
Of immeasurable value to lenders, agricultural economists, and a host of agribusinesses this unique volume brings together leading farmland authorities in the United States and Canada to examine the economic determinants of land value and the consequences of change in land values. As the most basic factor of production in the agricultural enterprise, farmland dominates the agricultural balance sheet, accounting for an average of 70% of all agricultural assets. The authors of this timely book provide expert analysis and review of this subject.
Organic farming plays a very important role in the modern society. Organic farming practice resulted in sustainability sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals. They are environmental health, commercially profitability and social-economic equity. A variety of philosophies, policies and practices have contributed to these goals. People in many different capacities from farmers to consumers have shared this vision and contributed to it. Despite the diversity of people and perspectives the following themes commonly weaves through definitions of sustainable agriculture.
The 2021 volume of the benchmark bibliography of Latin American Studies.
In November 2017, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at its headquarters outside Palmira, Colombia. As an important research center of the so-called Green Revolution in agricultural science and technologies, CIAT emphasizes its contributions to sustainability, food security, gender equity, inclusive markets, and resilient, climate-smart agriculture. Yet these terms hardly describe the Cauca Valley where CIAT is physically located, a place that has been transformed into an industrial monoculture of sugarcane where thirteen Colombian corporations oversee the vast majority of this valley’s famously fertile soil. This exemplifies the pa...
In this sweeping chronicle of guaraná—a glossy-leaved Amazonian vine packed with more caffeine than any other plant—Seth Garfield develops a wide-ranging approach to the history of Brazil itself. The story begins with guaraná as the pre-Columbian cultivar of the Sateré-Mawé people in the Lower Amazon region, where it figured centrally in the Indigenous nation’s origin stories, dietary regimes, and communal ceremonies. During subsequent centuries of Portuguese colonialism and Brazilian rule, guaraná was reformulated by settlers, scientists, folklorists, food technologists, and marketers. Whether in search of pleasure, profits, professional distinction, or patriotic markers, promote...
This book explores the policy implications of growing pressures for economic adjustment in the agricultural sectors of developed countries. The primary focus is on Europe and North America, but adjustment policies in other developed countries are discussed. Some chapters are based on an international workshop at Imperial College, London in October 2003 and an international symposium in Philadelphia in the spring of 2004.